


Between

by Nenalata



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers, Idiots in Love, Other Ships Not Mentioned in Tags, Pardon Me But I Would Like To Be Pardoned, Politics, Post-Blue Lions Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Post-War, Survivor Guilt, War Crimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:54:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22300660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nenalata/pseuds/Nenalata
Summary: Waves of power rolled off of Shamir and the Archbishop. Whatever one of them said would decide his fate. It had always been that way. Caspar had just taken way too many hours to understand that.After the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus's victory, former Imperial General Caspar von Bergliez stood trial for his contributions to the siege Fort Merceus—contributions as the resistance.Caspar had only just found himself again. His friends. His—close friends. Now, one tiny room full of bored former classmates threatened to take it all away once more. And Caspar was never known for diplomacy with words.
Relationships: Caspar von Bergliez/Hilda Valentine Goneril
Comments: 10
Kudos: 66
Collections: Honest Reasons to Fight





	Between

**Author's Note:**

  * For [roxyryoko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roxyryoko/gifts).



> I was really delighted when roxyryoko asked me to expand upon some behind-the-scenes stuff in my Sylvain/Mercedes fic [This One](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20766740/chapters/49346297) and its side-Caspar/Hilda fic [Surprise Me, Protect Me](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21507928): she asked about how Caspar's trial as enemy of the Kingdom went and wanted to see some of that world-building as well as how Hilda and Friends reacted!
> 
> This was fun to plan out and detail. Thank you so much for the opportunity!!

Time never caught up to Caspar. Caspar moved fast so that time would move slow, slower, slow enough he could stop what he needed and start what he wanted. Moments were precious, his teacher—no, not _that one_ —had taught him. Only moments stood between death and dying. Blink and you’re two steps behind and a step closer to death. Blink and Count Bergliez loses a son. A second son, sure, but Caspar had a clear destiny as head of some Imperial army or another. So the Bergliez personal brawlmaster had taught him even as a kid how to blink _between_ the moments. To ensure he kept two steps ahead and his enemies left in graves.

And then Caspar blinked _too_ fast.

One moment, Shamir was handing him his own ass in a “friendly” training bout when she caught him sneaking around the Fhirdiad palace.

 _Blink_.

Next, he was here, in some sort of Kingdom-style council room being stared at by His Royal Dimitri _and_ Shamir _and_ the Blue Lions Professor _and_ —

He was being asked a question.

“What’d you say?” _Shit_.

Ingrid, seated next to Dimitri’s side, did not stifle her sigh. Shamir hardly twitched.

“What was your role in the Imperial army?” she asked, blunt as a table knife.

As if she didn’t know. Why even ask? “I mean, I was a general,” Caspar answered, baffled. What was the point of this? He’d been hanging out by the door for an hour in chains while war prisoner after war prisoner passed in and out to be sentenced.

Or pardoned. Not many of those. But there were enough.

A scribe next to Shamir scribbled notes. “Leading what battalion?”

“Merceus Brawler Battalion, First Onslaught C,” he rattled off. The words slipped off his tongue. Habit, like roll call. Like commanding his men. Like reporting in.

 _Jeritza_. Twisted under a horse’s jet-black corpse, blood the same color as any other man and beast’s.

“—the fortress?”

_Shit._

“I…led them there, yeah,” Caspar said with a confidence he didn’t feel. Goddess, that stupid scribbling scribe was immortalizing his words. _Pay attention, Caspar. Blink and you’ll miss. Blink and you’ll fuck up_ —

“No, Bergliez,” Shamir said, and the way she dropped the name of his House sent something cold shivering through his bones. “I asked you where _you_ were during the Kingdom’s assault on the fortress.”

“Right, right.” Caspar’s sweating wrists chafed against his cuffs. They jingled when he shifted. “I was, uh. Fighting.”

“With your battalion?”

“Yeah, with my—”

 _He’d left them all to_ die. _One by one, they’d been overrun, too many instants between him and them, their bodies. And when only a few remained…_

_A wyvern’s scream replaced his soldiers’._

“None of ‘em made it out,” Caspar managed. Had that even made sense? Had he said _words_? “I…fought on my own. Pretty much. Pretty, uh, pretty soon.”

Scratch, scratch. “Around what point of the battle was this?”

What?

When his soldiers had died?

What was the _point_ of this? What was—

“What?”

This time, the sigh came from someone else. Someone, someone named—“He’s incomprehensible,” a familiar guy garbed in Fraldarius armor scoffed. “The man can hardly string two sentences together. He’s either too much an idiot to pose a threat, or enough of an idiot to run rampant.”

Scribble, scratch. “So Duke Fraldarius actually’s encouraging caution?” Ingrid, the _Queen_ , asked with a disturbing hint of humor in her voice. “Better safe than sorry, huh?”

“There are no apologies in death. _You_ should know that better than anyone.”

The words hung in the air between the House representatives, Shamir, the King, the Queen. The sentence. A proposition.

“What the fuck, Felix?” Caspar snapped, because right, _that_ was this asshole’s name and he’d always _been_ like this, even as a kid. “You already got me in these,” he rattled his own chains to prove his point, “and you _know_ I was strong enough even as a kid to break shit like this!”

Felix rolled his eyes, but there was a weird fire in the expression. “I remember a child. And you’re still acting like one.”

Rage fueled by insult flared in Caspar’s gut. “A child that beat your ass like, what, three times? In _two tournaments_ , Felix! Hell, I bet I can take you with my whole freakin’ body chained up!”

Felix’s smirk made Caspar want to punch him, even if he _hadn’t_ spoken. “Try it. See how far it gets you.”

Caspar almost did.

Because Goddess, wouldn’t it feel incredible? Exhilarating? Just flexing out of the chains—or maybe even staying in them—and lunging, seeing how many guards and pampered nobles and trained nobles and royalty and professors he could get through to remind Felix how many prizes he’d won back in school? It’d be so…awesome, so _badass_ , and he’d make Linhardt buy the drinks and Dorothea buy the food and Hilda, Hilda could—

They were all waiting for him. Outside this council chamber, well out of the way. Waiting to hear if he was going to be executed for fighting on the wrong side of a war.

Caspar set his jaw and looked away.

But Goddess, his skin _buzzed_ with fury.

“May I continue?” Shamir asked, sounding as bored with Felix’s stupid _challenge_ as Caspar was enraged.

“Please do,” King Dimitri told her.

“At the beginning of the Garland Moon, during the anniversary celebrations of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus’s victory, you were discovered hiding in the Fhirdiad palace guest quarters,” Shamir said, not even glancing at the stack of papers in front of her. It was a large stack. Detailing his many villainous crimes, maybe? Or just the entirety of their Imperial war criminals and _theirs_?

“I wasn’t _hiding_.”

She ignored him. “You claimed upon arrest you bore no ill will—”

It was all fucking Sylvain’s fault. It all would have been _fine_ and he and Hilda could have kept it up for as long as those little ‘celebrations’ lasted. They could drink and hang out and have _so_ much sex, because noble quarters, even non-Kingdom ones, were private and secluded. If one too many guards ever got too suspicious, he could dip and join Linhardt in his rooms or Dorothea in her hidey-hole of an inn—for whatever reason, _she’d_ felt her presence ‘too risky’ what with Ingrid toddling the halls, pregnant belly in tow—

But no, Sylvain had found them first. Back in school, Hilda and Sylvain had been seen in each other’s rooms enough for even Caspar to know about it. So of _course_ Sylvain had panicked to see the big scary war general holding delicate little Hilda, had to go running, get all cowardly, go _tattle_ in the name of ‘concern’ or some other bullshit.

Hilda hadn’t let him go after him. Linhardt hadn’t, either. No one had let him, not even Shamir, because she’d caught him the very next day stalking the grounds looking to beat a tree or something to a pulp and had offered to beat him to a pulp instead. It had seemed like the easiest way to get out of a fancy trial—first hit wins and all—but then the _Archbishop_ had found them, and—

“—House Goneril sheltering you.”

Caspar’s neck cracked as he whirled to gape at the Professor. “House…House _what_?”

“House Goneril, Caspar.” The Professor was all cleaned up and fancy in his Church of Seiros robes and jewelry. Caspar wondered if he could fight well in it, if he—“Hilda’s House. Remember? You were found in Goneril’s quarters.”

Caspar blinked. Slow, like syrup coating his eyes. “Yeah. So?”

The Professor propped his chin on his hand, irritatingly relaxed. “So Hilda Valentine _Goneril_ was harboring a war criminal.”

Caspar staggered back and didn’t even flinch when a Fhirdiad guard bumped him forward again. “Hilda—she didn’t _harbor_ a war criminal! She, it was, she was—she was with me!”

“Yep,” the Professor replied, casual, dismissive, calm. “You. A war criminal. Whose trial we’re all stuck in. And we’re going to waste our entire week on them, you know. Not just yours.”

Caspar’s mouth went dry.

 _Not just his_.

“Hilda didn’t do anything wrong,” he croaked. “It was my idea, I just…I just missed her, you know? Because after…after Fort—”

Oh, fuck _tears_.

That quill scratching again. Caspar blinked back those stupid, traitorous water droplets. “What happened after Fort Merceus, Caspar?” Shamir asked.

 _Linhardt found him, injured and broken by Jeritza’s corpse. Linhardt had found him, healed him, and Linhardt let him escape, because_ —

“I left Hilda alone.”

An elderly man whose jaw looked vaguely punchable in the way Sylvain’s did furrowed his brow. “The boy’s senseless.”

“No, shut it,” Caspar insisted frantically. Anything to get that quill scratching again. “I mean it. I…Hilda was really, really hurt. Like, her arm was all mangled and…and torn-up, and…”

_Four twisted scars on her shoulder hurt when it stormed._

_Caspar knew this because she’d whine about it, ask him to_ distract _her because the one time he’d tried massaging it—because she’d batted her eyes at him, because she needed to_ relax _and that seemed_ relaxing _to him, but now_ — _she’d screamed so loudly the sound sometimes joined the ones he imagined in his nightmares._

“I left her in a place where, uh,” Caspar swallowed around nothing, “someone could find her, patch her up, you know? Heal her better.”

The scribbling stopped while the scribe waited for Shamir to say something.

His own heartbeat had never pained his ears so badly before.

“So you developed a conscience mid-battle,” Shamir commented, and Caspar scrambled to correct her.

“I did what I thought was _right_ ,” he insisted. Maybe he was shouting, because the old man jerked in his fancy chair. “I always did what I thought was right. You _know_ that, Shamir!”

“And? If you suddenly decide the _right_ thing is to, what did you say, Felix—”

“Run rampant.”

“—is that the right thing to do someday? Run rampant on whatever insults you next?”

Caspar’s fingers shook. What was she getting at? What stupid game was this? _She_ was the one who’d been willing to let him go with a slap on the wrist. Fuck, even the Professor or Archbishop or whatever had sulked when he realized he’d have to ‘report’ running into the two of them or things would ‘get really annoying.’ And now they were _both_ being little _shits_ about it, treating him like a piece of trash—

If he gave in and kept getting angry, he’d just seem like their reasons for _reporting_ were valid. But if he played by the rules…maybe they’d go a little easier on him.

The King and Queen, for example, had hardly spoken. Hardly even glanced at him, though Ingrid was at least trying to seem engaged half the time. There had probably been a million other trials today.

Meanwhile, waves of power rolled off of Shamir and the Archbishop. Whatever one of them said would decide his fate. It had always been that way. Caspar had just taken way too many hours to understand that.

He shook his head. “No. I did what I believed was _right_ and that was to _save people_. I took my orders from Jeritza, and when he died”— _when your Majesties killed him and Mercedes was crying and I never found out why_ —"all _my_ orders were spent on keeping my _own_ soldiers alive. So,” he laughed, bitter through bitter tears, “I guess if you’re looking for a shepherd or something, you should find someone else.”

“Okay, Caspar. We’ll let you know openings.”

“I saved Hilda,” Caspar said, because it was better than hearing Dorothea’s friend _mock_ him while she decided whether he lived or died, “because I thought that was the right thing to do, too. She was hurt and…and not a threat, and deserved a chance to be helped by someone who could actually do a damn thing for her. Even if that someone wasn’t me.”

Goddess. Would he be able to say goodbye to anyone?

Had any of the people Shamir and the Archbishop shunted out of this room gotten a chance to say goodbye?

“I wanted Hilda to make it _through_ the fucking war.” Caspar glared at the two of them with new heat. “So leave her out of this, okay? You can’t _do_ that to her. She just wanted to…to help, to—”

 _Love me, maybe, to_ —

“Favor for a favor,” the Archbishop said abruptly. He yawned, stretched, and rose from his chair in the blink of an eye. “Life for a life. Everything’s squared away. I’m ringing for lunch.”

“I’ll do it,” Shamir cut him off. “I remember the orders from last time. Representatives of Holy Kingdom Houses, cast your votes.”

Caspar’s mouth hung open while the rest of the bored-looking nobles checked symbols off on parchment in front of them and dropped them in a box the scribe passed around. When the box made its way back to King Dimitri, he opened it up, read through each mysterious symbol marking with as much attention as the bags under his eyes allowed him, sighed, closed the lid, and declared Caspar pardoned of all crimes committed against the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus from the years 1180 until 1186.

He also declared he had a headache and would perhaps like some chamomile tea to accompany his lunch, but by that time, Caspar had already been escorted from the room, his shackles handed off to a guard to put around some other prisoner for after lunch.

* * *

Just as Caspar had hoped, there were three celebratory guests waiting back in the Goneril guest quarters. But aside from Hilda squealing and launching herself at him, slinging her arms around his neck while he spun her around, they seemed less…shocked than he’d expected.

“Rest of you don’t seem very excited. What’s the deal?” Caspar asked the room when he’d set Hilda down. She snuggled deeper into his chest, not quite disentangling herself from him. He kind of hoped she didn’t hear how fast his heart was racing, because not all of it was because she was touching him.

Dorothea raised a carefully-groomed brow. “The ‘deal?’ Didn’t you just negotiate one for your life?”

“No, I didn’t,” Caspar sulked— _said_ back. “There I was, sweating my balls off while I had to…talk about everything that happened back in Fort Merceus, and next thing I knew, the Professor said it was lunchtime and I was free to go.”

“You’ve always been a secret smooth-talker,” Dorothea crooned. “I never lost faith in you, big bro.”

Caspar wrinkled his nose. “ _Stop_.”

“Ew,” Hilda agreed.

Linhardt poked his head up from his nest of pillows by the fireplace. “Lying to Caspar’s face aside, he was never in any _real_ danger. There’s hardly anything to _get_ excited about.” He looked fresh from a nap, but he’d half-opened his eyes to speak, so that was flattering, maybe.

“What’re you talking about?” Caspar’s hands slid from Hilda’s hips. She got the hint and let go, but she did tug him towards one of the couches. She clambered into his lap the second his ass hit the cushion.

“Oh, someone else explain it to him,” Linhardt complained mid-yawn. He burrowed into the cushions, but unfortunately for him, no one volunteered. With a sigh, he continued, “It’s obvious, isn’t it? Did you _really_ think the Professor was going to kill you?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Or Shamir,” Linhardt added, ignoring him. “She always liked you, Shamir.”

Caspar’s fraught nerves made his tense muscles grow tenser. Hilda was stroking distracting little patterns on his chest, but not distracting enough. “So you’re saying it’s _obvious_ I made it outta that war room alive because…because two big-shots in the room… _like_ me?”

Linhardt blinked, one slow, lazy movement. “Yep. That’s politics, Caspa—”

Caspar was up on his feet in seconds, barely sparing a ‘sorry’ for Hilda as she tumbled off his lap. “You know how many people came out of the room in chains?” he spat, whirling on Linhardt, on Dorothea, on—on all of them, there wasn’t even anyone to _fight_ —“Way more than me, that’s for damn sure!”

“Of course,” Dorothea said, more gently this time. “That’s war. Caspar, that’s _war_.”

“Well, it’s bullshit! This is…it’s awful, it’s _bullshit_!” Shaking, he helped Hilda to her feet with another apology anyway. But once up, she pulled away.

“Yeah, it sure is,” she agreed. “But it’s not like you didn’t know that. I mean, your father is—was the Minister of Military Affairs. You kinda…grew up knowing that.” 

Caspar frowned. “No, it’s _different_.”

Hilda heaved a dramatic sigh. And while Dorothea’s always pissed him off and embarrassed him in equal parts, Caspar just felt…confused.

“Caspar. You’re a great guy. You’re super nice and strong and sexy when you punch people. I love you for it, you know? And you’re pretty smart, too.”

Some stupid part of him was getting all puffed up, even though he heard Dorothea _and_ Linhardt scoff, almost in unison.

“But you can be kinda dumb when it comes to justice and stuff like that.”

Caspar’s frown deepened into an outright offended glare. “It’s _not_ —”

“War’s not just killing people. It’s cleaning up the battlefield, too.” Hilda correctly took his silence as reason enough to continue. “You _know_ I hate that. We had to do all the weeding stuff together back in school, right?”

“That was to clean up the _literal_ fields—”

“Well, we had other classes to clean up the _living_ bodies,” Linhardt chimed in unhelpfully from his pile of pillows. Caspar’s blood chilled in its veins. “Classes, might I add, you spent learning how to juggle gambling dice instead of paying attention and taking notes for me.”

“Lin, that’s not an effective lecture.”

“Well, then _I_ couldn’t nap through that time period in the slightest, since I had to take notes for us _both_.”

“That’s what you’d’ve been doing anyway.”

Caspar tuned them out. Some very small, but very important thought had just processed.

“You love me, huh?” he grinned at Hilda.

Hilda’s face ran so pink Caspar almost felt its heat. Or maybe that was because he’d gotten closer. She tossed her hair over her shoulder, and it brushed his neck. “Well, it’s in a whatever kind of way, I guess.”

“But like…” Caspar put his hands on her hips and gently tugged her closer. “Like in a ‘you love me’ way?”

Hilda’s rapid-fire blinks probably made it hard for her to see, which was a damn shame because Caspar kind of wanted her to see him smiling. He brushed his lips over her forehead, and—was that a shiver? Had she shivered in his hands? He did it again, the opposite direction, just to check, mumbling, “Well?” and getting rewarded for it.

“I mean, well…”

 _Hilda never asked for favors_.

“I hope you do,” Caspar murmured, trailing his lips down her cheek. “’Cause I really love you.”

“Time to go, Lin!” Dorothea announced, startling the whole room. Caspar tightened his grip on Hilda’s hips as she tried to jump away.

“I’ll just go deeper in the pillows,” stupid fucking Linhardt reasoned with her. “If they’re quiet, then I can keep—”

“Lin, _I_ don’t want to be—”

“Then you can join me. What’s so hard about—”

Many pillows and one Linhardt blew across the room.

“Well, farewell, I suppose—I’m _coming_ Doroth—”

The door slammed closed.

Hilda and Caspar stared at it, then each other, in silence.

“So, uh,” Caspar cleared his throat. “You were, um, saying, uh—”

“I love you. A lot.” The words came out of Hilda’s lips in a rush. “And I was really, really, really scared today. I…knew it’d be fine, because everyone said it’d be fine, you know, but…I was really, really, super scared they’d be wrong. And do _not_ tell them that,” she hurried to say.

“Wait, hold on,” Caspar stopped her. “I’m, uh, still processing.”

Hilda raked her nails down his chest, and now _he_ shuddered. “That I love you?”

Well. Yeah. That. Sure. But…

The Kingdom hadn’t cared about his lost soldiers.

It hadn’t cared about its _own_ lost soldiers.

It hadn’t cared that he’d fled the battlefield. That he’d saved one general in their army over countless others because of some weak, fluttering emotion gone in a blink of an eye. That he’d been slouching around the palace full of venom any time he heard any threat, Sylvain or anyone else aside. That he was here because he loved someone, had people dear to him, people he could have killed despite that and, maybe in a timeline not so different from this one, could have had _reason_ to.

Caspar lived because a handful of powerful people knew and liked him.

And for all that those powerful people had sent hundreds, maybe thousands of soldiers to their deaths one way or another without a backwards glance…

Caspar had saved the woman in his arms now because he knew and liked her.

And he’d killed so many other people he didn’t.

But…

“Yeah,” Caspar said, tilting her chin. It was easier to drag a smile to his face than he’d feared. “I love you.”

Maybe he’d process with her later.

Watching Hilda’s eyes slide closed, slow, slower, so _expectant_ while he pulled her closer, waiting for him, for _him_ …

Caspar’s lips captured hers in a searing, bruising kiss, moaning almost the second their mouths collided. His tongue swiped against hers almost frantically, tasting her, making sure she was real.

Every kiss—

 _He could never have come back_.

—touched him in ways—

_The Professor could have forgotten him._

—he’d never felt, not like this—

_His soldiers were dead._

—but he was so _alive_.

“You were scared?” Caspar asked her when they gave each other room to breathe simply by migrating to the couch. She dragged him down to her, and he slotted himself between her thighs. He smoothed his thumbs over her cheekbones, cupping the rest of her tiny, round face in his hands.

Hilda nodded, her hair mussed up on the cushion. “It’s a secret, though.” She mustered a pathetic, lopsided little grin.

“A secret, huh?” Caspar laved his tongue on her shirt, the fabric above her bellybutton, and Hilda failed to stifle a moan against his hand. He peered up at her, brushing a thumb against her lower lip. She opened her mouth, but he pulled away, caressing her across her jaw, down her neck, lingering between her breasts, down to her stomach. He propped himself up on both hands, grinning at her offended little ‘oof!’ as his weight shifted on her. “Then I’m gonna tell _you_ a secret.”

Hilda nodded, giving him permission to continue.

Her eye thing, the black stuff the…thing-whatever…

“I was really scared, too.”

“Oh,” Hilda said, hiccupped. It was such a silly, cute sound he started to laugh, but something in the way her eyelashes were fluttering stopped him—

The mascara. Right.

Her mascara was smudged.

 _Running._ That was the word she always used.

“Well. Kind of dumb of us,” Hilda tried to chirp. “Being so scared when everything was gonna turn out okay anyway.”

Caspar clambered off her and gathered her into his arms. She clutched him tight, burying her face into his neck. He ignored it when her nails scored what would doubtless be painful scratches on his shoulders even through his shirt. It was hard enough to tell who was trembling more anyway, and he didn’t think either of them were in a mood to admit it.

“I think it’s okay to be dumb about that kind of thing sometimes,” Caspar whispered into her hair. “Makes living in the moment way better, right?”

She nodded against him. His neck was wet.

Well, so fucking what. Hers was, too, and they’d scared their friends away for a while, anyway.

“You should tell me you love me more often, then,” Hilda said, voice muffled against his skin. An accusatory tone colored her words. “Make those moments count and all.”

Caspar squeezed her and earned another ‘oof!’ for his troubles.

“Yeah, sure thing.”

A tentative arm squeezed him back, hard enough his ribs protested.

Silence.

It was…expectant.

 _Blink and you’ll miss your shot, Caspar_.

“Love you.”

“Yeah. Love you, too.”

_Make the best of those moments between._

** the end **


End file.
